Collaborative networks are a special type of social network formed by members who collectively achieve specific goals, such as fixing software bugs and resolving customers' problems. In such networks, information flow among members is driven by the tasks assigned to the network and the expertise of members.
In networks of software bug fixing and reporting, a given software bug will typically start with a ticket or other report describing the problem. A ticket may be submitted by various individuals, such as a consumer of the software product, software developers testing the product, etc. The ticket is initially routed to a first expert in the network. The first expert may be a dispatcher, who analyzes the ticket and determines an appropriate expert to solve the ticket. The first expert may also attempt to solve the ticket without routing. The ticket may be routed among several experts until a given one of the experts is able to solve the ticket. This process can be inefficient, especially where dispatchers and experts lack sufficient knowledge of the expertise of other experts in the network.